But Mrs. Randall Latham, watching
her husband's ship bear off to seaward in the face of a keen gale,
caught a severe cold, and when Captain Randall returned the next
time he came not to a cradle in the great living room of the big,
brown house, but to an already-sodden grave in the family plot on
the west side of the saucerlike valley.
Lucretia Latham had grown to be a tall, large-boned, silent, and
quick-stepping woman--a woman of understanding and infinite
tenderness, although this tenderness was exhibited in deeds, not
words.
The big, quiet-faced woman, who had never had a lover and on whom no
man had ever looked with admiration, seemed to the casual observer
cold and uncompromising. She might speak to the dog, call the fowls
to their meals, but she never otherwise spoke unless she was forced
to. When he was little, Tunis had found in her arms and against her
breast a refuge from all hurt and fear, but it was a wordless
comfort Aunt Lucretia gave him.
When he walked over from the cove that afternoon, after seeing the
anchor of the _Seamew_ over-side for the first time in this
roadstead, Tunis found his Aunt Lucretia much as usual. She watched
him approach from the side porch, a warm smile of greeting on her
rather gaunt face.
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